Author Archive

Engulfed in quotes from business people

Saturday, June 22nd, 2013

I think you should write the rules, if you follow things in a formulaic manner you will wind up at best being the same as everyone else

Tim Cook – Inspirational Nuggets. Collaboration and lack of ego seems to be massively important to Apple.

Find me a provocative topic, and I’ll show you something you don’t have to spend a lot of marketing dollars to launch. People like to be provoked, and if you are provoking with information that is on the side of the angels, on the side of the consumer, the louder the industry reacts. And they just can’t win. It’s the greatest way to market, pick a fight with somebody who can’t win.

Rich Barton says pick a fight.

4. Look for what isn’t there. But should be.
5. Ideas make you stand out. Great ideas make you standalone.
15. ‘Standing still’ is just a nicer way of saying ‘going backwards’. Don’t stand still.

23 Laws of Creativity from David Hieatt.

Figure 1 – Crowd sourcing medical knowledge

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

Came across an iPhone app (US Store only) for Doctors to share (with consent) patient ailment pics called Figure 1.

Take a pic, share it, get feedback. You find some very gorey things, like brains at an autopsy, severed fingers etc. Or this one:
Figure1Pic1

Or when Doctors share the shoddy work of other Doctors, you may get worried:
Figure1Pic2

Fun times.

Don’t be at your desk, don’t be in Cork, don’t be in Ireland

Sunday, June 16th, 2013

Leave.

We need to send our sons and daughters away. All the bleating from Enterprise Ireland and the IDA showing off hipsters in startups in Ireland (that they rarely gave a shit about until it became a marketing hook) is great but where the big time is, is not here. We’re Ireland. We’re not Silicon Valley, we have more landmass than Israel but nothing else compares. Hipster startup kids, you’re just marketing collateral for Enterprise Ireland and the IDA to bring in tax avoidance money and a smattering of jobs. I worry for Pat Phelan as he drives himself to the edge of the burnout cliff and then stamps the dirt down on that edge but Trustev is hitting all the right spots and you’ll notice while it was thought of, formulated and molded in Ireland, to succeed Pat and Chris need to be on planes going out of the country for meetings. It can be anchored here but there isn’t going to be many walk-in customers for Trustev. And that’s where they’re going and that’s why they’re hitting it out of the park every day with awards, media attention and nonstop calls. Well done them.

There isn’t the established wealth and there isn’t the inbound wealth in Ireland to lavish patience on startups. You’ll probably learn more in one day in the startup scene in London, New York and Berlin than in Ireland in six months. Whether a conscious decision or a reactive necessity, Wayra in supporting Pat and Trustev, has helped them to be what appears to be “everywhere, every week”. Wayra is handy in that they have incubation centres in many countries so they have people on site in places you need (and not just ought) to be. A network of global incubation centres, great idea.

For me, in the busy season, I see my house at weekends and when people ask me is all the (internal) travel tiring, I tell them of course it is but I go where the money is. One of the suggestions from the Farmleigh love-ins a few years ago was to take some of the best business graduates and send them into the middle management of various countries in Europe, Africa, Asia. It seems the Government worried about the “optics” of a brain drain. That worked…

Apocrypha about the Collisons unable to set up a company in Ireland or even Father Ted being rejected by RTÉ probably aid in the lie that you could be big in Ireland “if it wasn’t for”, in truth you’ll fail faster and better and succeed in places with more resources and experience. London is better for comedy and TV than Dublin, Silicon Valley is going to be better to work on a startup. How much would it cost to be a mini-model of Silicon Valley in Ireland? Billions? And you’ll still be going to the Valley monthly anyway.

Irish people have a huge sense of longing and want to be back to where they came from. They’ll also help out their brothers and sisters at “home” when they can. Hubspot and the Irish roots connection. EMC. Again, they might be good PR bits but Cork got EMC because of a Cork connection. Ireland would benefit immensely if more Irish people were in companies outside of Ireland, corporate tax dodges or not. English speaking well educated workforce yada yada, yet it’s foreign language jobs the multinationals hire here for more …

Teach our graduates how to work in startups in the States, in London, in Berlin, in Hong Kong and enable them to do that. Throw a rock in Ireland now and you hit an incubation centre, there are companies that play the “incubation centre” shuffle as they hop from incubation centre to centre for 6 years it seems. That suggests there are not enough quality startups out there surely or too many incubation centres?

Want to start a startup in Ireland, have no ties like kids and a mortgage? Leave and fuck those that guilt trip you with “I decided to stay and fight here”, I’m staying because I’m comfortable and lazy, actually.

Anyway, this started as a link to Trustev winning another award and congratulating them. Ooops.

Fluffy Links – Saturday June 15th 2013

Saturday, June 15th, 2013

“Through the use of language, I was writing God into existence … the actualising of God through the medium of the lovesong remains my prime motivation as an artist.” Nick Cave on the art of writing the love song. 45+ minutes of miserable beauty.

Terrifying. You don’t say yes to the NSA and:

And then the DoJ targeted him and prosecuted him and put him in prison for insider trading — on the theory that he knew of anticipated income from secret programs that QWest was planning for the government, while the public didn’t because it was classified and he couldn’t legally tell them, and then he bought or sold QWest stock knowing those things.

A cricket orchestra. Really. Lars Fredriksson looks after all sorts of Chinese crickets and then builds an orchestra around them. The chirps from them change depending on the instrument that plays with them. Found via Lyric FM.

Evening course in Chinese with a module on doing business, in UCC from September. Awfully designed website alert (I can’t even link directly to the course page)

Daniel Pink, the new ABCs of selling. Hmmm, dunno.

The worst charities in America. Works exactly the same here. For-profit companies collecting for charities is lazy, indulgent and idiotic. But then look at all the Irish “charities” with CEOs on well over 120k a year. Charity in definition only.

The latest not so very subtle message from Apple is that they deeply understand design and are a Californian design company. An expensively produced ad on how Apple helps people to change the world is brilliant too:

Stanley Kubrick – the full docu

Fluffy Links – Tuesday June 11th 2013

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013

The Guerrilla Gourmet Club. Ross Golden-Bannon & Robert Lee Mulcahy are doing a popup restaurant on Friday, 21 June in Dublin.

Startup motivational posters.

What’s behind the Facebook sound? Notes with F A C and E.

Panti in the Abbey. Great to see her show pop up there.

The original Sesame Street cast and the first episode.

Search data tells you if a movie will be a hit or not before the first opening weekend. Thanks Google.

The rise of the hardware startup.

The out of control surveillance state.

23 laws of creativity. David Hieatt. Legend.

The Tony Awards 2013 opening is all kinds of awesome.

Free Will and Testament

What is porn site juggernaut Manwin doing in Ireland?

Sunday, May 26th, 2013

To save you from reading the whole post: They make mobile apps. Apps to download porn, gambling apps and viral video viewing apps.

Today the Indo had a piece on porn company Manwin and their Irish setup. The Irish Times also did this story a few months back.

The bit that interested me was them not saying what they do here:

Manwin refused to comment in detail on what it does here or to discuss whether it had located here in part for tax purposes.

“Manwin is a private company and accordingly, matters pertaining to its operations are treated in the same manner,” the spokesperson said.

If you did some LinkedIn searches however, you’d find a number of people who work for Manwin.

This is their CEO for Ireland.

Now there’s a games company in Dublin called Super Hippo Studios that never mentions they’re owned by Manwin on their site. But some of the Super Hippo Studios staffers confirm the Manwin link on their LinkedIn profiles:

Staff1Manwin

and:
QALeadManwin

A search of the CRO and we find out…
Super Hippo Studios Registered Office:
1St Floor
Riverview House
21/23 City Quay
Dublin 2
Ireland

Which is the same registered address as Manwin Ireland.

And Super Hippo acknowledge on GameDevelopers.ie who their owner is but point out that they don’t do anything around porn:

Game Developers Ireland Manwin

Anyway, Super Hippo (who we now know is owned by Manwin) tweeted about some of their games.

One is a Trivia game. On iTunes the publisher is registered as another company, yet again – Mirmay Limited.

TriviaPics

and a lookup of them on Duedil tell us…

Registered Office:
1st Floor
Riverview House
21/23 City Quay
Dublin 2
Ireland

Same address for the Manwin companies and Super Hippo, this is just a firm that does all of these registrations but, still, all using the same company to reg.

And some of their other “apps” include this one that hints at it being used to download video content from “tubes” sites and to hide away the content then: “The app allows you to easily download media from free tubes and other media sites to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. ”

Tubes, hmm. And going back to Manwin wikipedia page: “Manwin is the owner of many major pornographic web 2.0 websites including YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube

Apple is very anti-porn so one can’t say directly on an ITunes listing that an app is for porn as it might be banned. This app was only recently updated: May 20, 2013.

And so a further twist, another of the games made by Mirmay/Super Hippo/Manwin is called Video Bash.

The app and website mentions Clayden Holding Ltd, owned by the owner of Manwin, though they say registered in Cyprus but a record I found said that company was dissolved in Cyprus. Here is the Canadian listing.

And finally, a gambling game made by them, Golden Slots Casino.

Fairly convoluted structure.

Fluffy Links – Friday May 24th 2013

Friday, May 24th, 2013

Nice handy list of social media policies.

Coming to the Opera House – Singing Nina, The Life and Music of Nina Simone, performed in narration/sung by Karen Underwood on May 31st.

The West Cork Garden Trail is on 15th to 30th June 2013. Nice pretty gardens open to the public.

Courses from Mulley Comms:
PR Workshop – Getting your business into the media.
Responsive Web Design.

Euclid, Google Analytics for retail stores. Great idea, maybe slightly creepy. Track visitors by them trying to connect to your store WiFi.

Greenshoots 2013 Awards & Showcase are on May 30th 2013. This ceremony marks the end of the third Greenshoots Programme and you’ll see how companies have progressed after the 9 month programme.

The dark social web. Email and IM.

How to use Facebook to capture leads.

Interesting site. Economiser.ie

Reach for the Dead

Fluffy Links – Wednesday 22nd May 2013

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Kickstarter shows that celeb Kickstarters bring more people in, bring more money to other projects.

Visually, connect it to Google Analytics for nice data graphics.

Scott Ian, spoken word in Cyprus Avenue.

While this back and forth between Steve Jobs and James Murdoch shows Steve didn’t take shit, it actually shows what Amazon is up to with e-books and how they’re losing money. For now.

Bank of Ireland now doing free spaces in Dublin for business people. Do I need to be a business customer?

Hollywood already has script doctors. Now they go through data on movies too. Data science y’all.

Job in UCC. Director of Marketing Communications.

Watched a documentary on Leigh Bowery. Fascinating guy. Some performance artist. I want his glasses.

@BreakingNews and how they operate. “With us it’s interesting — there’s pressure to be second”

Marc Almond – What Makes A Man

Fluffy Links – Wednesday May 8th 2013

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Billy Hawkes, the man who tamed Facebook and Marne Levine, Facebook’s Vice-President for Global Public Policy talk Protecting Personal Data in the Digital Age. 17 May at 12.00p.m.

Remember that idea of a foldable plug? Get it here.

300 social media policies.

The next iteration of Seán Bonner’s Safecast cheaper Geiger counter is to make it portable. Dronized Safecast.

Habitual by AJ. A simple personal analytics app. Android based.

Facebook Wifi, love the idea, they need to bring it to Ireland. “Will check-in for WiFi”.

McBain stitched together. Genius.

An information session will be held at Western Gateway Building, UCC on 5 June for those interested in entering the Seedcorn Business Competition. Big wad of cash for overall and area winners.

Panti mentioned Leigh Bowery in this video about how she started in drag. The full documentary about Leigh Bowery is available in six parts on YouTube. It starts here. I think I’ll get myself a pair of his glasses.

Rebekka Karijord – Oh Brother

Moments of truth

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Steal this objective from Netflix, it applies to all businesses:

Netflix in 2013 on what comes next:

Our North Star is to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”. Those decision moments are, say, on Thursday 7:15 pm or Monday 2:40 am when our member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is just bored. They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, turn on Hulu or Amazon Prime, or they could tap on Netflix. We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth.

We win those moments of truth when members expect, based on their prior experience with us, that Netflix will be pleasurable, compared to all those other options. The pleasure comes from our simple experience for choosing, control over when to start/pause/resume the video, and from content that suits their taste and their mood.

When we deliver enjoyment, members watch more Netflix, continue their membership, and evangelize Netflix to their friends